"Back in 2021, in the thick of pandemic mania, The Register gleefully reported that "radioactive hybrid terror pigs" were thriving in Japan's Fukushima exclusion zone. The image of feral swine exposed to 300 times the safe human dose of cesium-137 after the 2011 nuclear meltdown, interbreeding with wild boar and roaming a post-apocalyptic hellscape, proved unusually popular with readers. It even spawned fan art. I suppose we were all extremely bored."
"More intriguingly, the researchers say the rapid, year-round reproductive pattern typical of domestic pigs in the care of humans appears to have accelerated generational turnover in the population. In contrast, wild boar naturally breed only once per year. So while the hybrids are increasingly boar-like again in their nuclear DNA, the initial domestic infusion may have put the local gene pool on fast-forward."
DNA analysis of pigs and boar inside and around the Fukushima exclusion zone found domestic pig genes initially mixed freely with wild boar but are now being diluted as hybrids backcross with the local population. Mitochondrial DNA, inherited maternally, indicates domestic sows played a key role in the early hybridization. The year-round reproductive pattern typical of domestic pigs appears to have accelerated generational turnover compared with wild boar, which breed only once per year. Nuclear DNA is reverting toward boar-like composition while the initial domestic infusion may have boosted short-term population growth and altered genetic trajectories.
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